After tinkering with one of the SIM cards he’d picked up at the supermarket and patching it into the freshly cobbled-together David Net?, David? began slotting them into the first batch of humanoid robots. Technically, he could have activated all of them at once, but without the proper software—or an army of people strapped into VR headsets for manual control—they were little more than oversized laundry folders.
David opened his laptop, the SDK already installed, and began working. Within thirty minutes he remade his previous progress. He repeated his success with helping smaller robots reload, but this time without crutches and duct tape—done properly.
Leaning back in his chair, David stretched with a tired smile.
“Finally,” he muttered. “Reloading done.”
“Well, at least until the next iteration” he grumbled.
David dispatched a trio of humanoid units to assist the waiter-bots. Their job was simple but crucial: stand by the entrance with a crate of magazines so the treaded bots could roll up for quick reloads. With that task delegated, David turned his attention to something far more ambitious—teaching the humanoids how to handle firearms properly.
He grabbed one of the M4 carbines—there was no shortage, given the stockpile he had borrowed earlier from the police armory along with pistols—and fitted it into a robot’s hands.
“Alright, buddy,” he muttered under his breath, slipping on the VR headset. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Through the VR headset, the world shifted into the robot’s perspective. He guided the machine out of the robotics wing and into open air, not eager to rattle his own eardrums with gunfire inside. Once in the courtyard, he raised the rifle and squeezed off a burst.
The recoil jolted the bot’s arms, but the weapon stayed more or less on target and the robot didn’t even fall this time, thanks to the proper stance! When the magazine ran dry, he went through the motions of reloading: eject, grab, insert, slap, charge. Every gesture was recorded by the system, neatly packaged into sequences that could later be sliced and looped for autonomous execution.
The tricky part came next. Unlike the waiter-bots, the humanoids didn’t have the same streamlined software package for “client” recognition. Technically they did, but it was a slightly different build—and David wasn’t eager to repeat the fiasco of getting shot at because of some fresh bug in the code. Once bitten, twice paranoid.
He dug into the archives, patched in the older, more reliable modules from the waiters, and—most importantly—checked the box for the personnel blacklist this time. No more friendly fire accidents. After slicing the right part of his recorded actions, the robot was ready to shoot.
Satisfied, he sent one of the humanoid units beyond the perimeter to run a live test. With a bag of chips in one hand and a bottle of soda in the other, David sat back and waited. Minutes dragged on, the only soundtrack being the crunch of junk food and the occasional fizz of carbonation.
Finally, twenty minutes later, the familiar silhouette of a monster-dog appeared at the edge of the field. The robot raised its rifle, fired, and dropped the creature cleanly.
David shot to his feet, grinning like an idiot.
“Yes! Finally!”
He turned to the nearest idle humanoid unit standing stiffly by his side and, without thinking, threw his arms around it in triumph. The robot didn’t react, just stood there frozen in default posture, but David didn’t care. For a moment, it felt like victory.
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Next step: teaching the humanoid robots how to reload an M4. It took a few trial runs, and more than a little patience on his part, but eventually, using the recorded actions, the machines started to get the hang of it. (It was harder than teaching them how to press a trigger)
Then came the logistics problem. Where would they actually store all the spare ammunition? David leaned back in his chair. A proper supply system or some sort of cloth with slots for ammo would take time, and he didn’t have much of that. After a moment, he waved the thought aside.
“Fine. Forget it for now,” he muttered. “They’ll just walk to the front entrance whenever they need a reload. I’ll leave a crate of mags there.”
It was a crude solution, but it worked. Later, when he had the time—or the guts—to raid the police station again, maybe he’d come up with something smarter. For the moment, the important thing was that his new soldiers could shoot and reload. Now it was time to scale up.
David threw himself into the task with mechanical efficiency. One by one, he powered up the humanoid robots, patched them with the necessary software, shoved rifles into their hands, and gave them an order via his laptop: go stand guard.
It was almost like running an assembly line—switch on, program, arm, deploy. Before long, twenty robots stood in neat formation, weapons ready, their blank digital eyes reflecting fluorescent light. The sight made him grin; it looked like a private militia born in a single afternoon.
Then he hit a wall. The racks were empty. Twenty rifles, no more.
David crossed his arms, frowning at the last unarmed units waiting silently like soldiers without purpose.
“Well, that’s a problem,” he muttered.
If his army was going to grow, he’d need more firepower. He pulled up a map on his laptop, scanning the city layout. His finger traced the streets until it landed on a promising marker—an old gun store, sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with the police station.
“Perfect. Next iteration, I’ll hit them both. Stock up properly.”
For now, twenty armed robots would do. But in the back of his mind, David was already picturing lines of steel soldiers, every one of them carrying a weapon, ready to face whatever the dome decided to throw at him.
David dispatched his robots to patrol the perimeter, then took direct control of one unit to make a run for extra weapons. By now, the cycle had progressed far enough that the big variant of the dogs were starting to spawn. The dogs stormed the perimeter but paid almost no attention to the robots—at least until they started laying down fire.
His sortie using the robot was like a stealth mission, because most of the dogs concentrated on getting to him in the main building as a distraction. Guiding the humanoid that controlled another borrowed car, David reached the gun store conveniently close to the police station.
The moment David stepped through the door of the gun shop, his jaw nearly hit the floor. Not the robot’s—his own. What stretched before him was a staggering arsenal, dwarfing even the police station’s stockpile he had raided earlier.
Rows upon rows of weapons: rifles stacked in neat racks, pistols lined up in multiple rows, and entire walls devoted to shotguns and sniper rifles. His eyes darted from familiar silhouettes to exotic shapes, lingering on models he had only ever seen in video games. A Desert Eagle rested on the counter, its weighty profile screaming excess. A dozen shotguns hung above it, and beyond them, giant sniper rifles.
David froze, overwhelmed. He felt like a child who had just stumbled into a candy store, except every candy here came with a trigger. His fingers twitched, already itching to sort, catalog, and assign. There was enough firepower here to arm three hundred robots, maybe more. It's high time to steal everything and transport it to the main office.
Well, not stealing, he told himself with a smirk—just a bit of apocalyptic borrowing.
Loaded down with ammo and weapons, he steered the car back to the complex. It took time and effort to configure everything properly, but eventually his personal army swelled to fifty armed units (for now he has armed them only with the m4 weapon they already know, for everything else they will need additional tuning). Rows of robots stood ready, their newly-acquired firearms gleaming under flickering lights. It looked like some sort of sci-fi dictatorship.
He always dreamed of being EL PRESIDENTO!
After sending robots to patrol and occupy static points, exhausted but satisfied David finally allowed himself a break. He tore into a snack, washing it down with a bottle of overpriced wine he’d looted from the supermarket’s delicatessen aisle earlier.
For the first time in many loops, he lay back, confident that nothing was going to threaten him in the immediate future. With a faint smile, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, his robotic guard silently watching over him.
